You Never Come Back From Tenpenny Tower
by LucyStag
Summary: The Lone Wanderer tries to get the courage up to make that final trek to Vault 87.


12.14.77

The first night at the Citadel, I dream of my father flicking the switch and flooding the Project Purity room with radiation. In the dream, I scream at Dr. Li, I shoot the glass, and it does not break. Dad and the Enclave soldier still fall, Dr. Li still says we have to run. Only this time, when I look back to make sure he's really gone this time, it's not dad lying there, but the burning body of Roy Phillips. Phillips is smiling at me as he burns, and I wake up with a jolt. Years of traveling the Capital Wasteland have trained me well. I do not scream in my nightmares anymore. I merely awake with a silent gasp and scream.

I move as quietly as you can with heavy armor on. I've fallen asleep while wearing it. It's the only way I feel truly safe unless I am in my Megaton bed.

"Come on, pup" I tell Dogmeat. He obliges with a quiet whine. If he was sleeping, he is awake now. After all, he was out in the Wastes longer than I was. He knows how to be quiet, too.

We slip past the sleeping Brotherhood, and the ones on guard who speak in respectful tones so unlike the usual condescension coming from Brothers I've met in my travels. Star Paladin Cross is asleep. I had to plead with her to do so. She may have assured me that she is nobody's servant when we first met, but she still appears to be dead-set on getting me to my goal. Or to dad's goal. Vault 87 seems a million miles away right now. For the first time in a long time, I don't have the heart for exploration, or the stomach for a fight. I want my dad back. I took out eight Supermutants that day, and maybe that many Enclave Soldiers. Did he think he needed to save me, when he spent nearly two years apart? After I made a name for myself out in this hellhole and survived, and even managed to - I thought - do a little good?

What a God damned martyr he turned out to be. And what an inconsistent one. And well, if it was for Dr. Li and the rest of the scientists - including the one so absent-minded he calls me "little lady" when I am dressed in full Power Armor - I could have protected them as well. I did. I got them here.

I reach into my pack for a bottle of whiskey and stare up at the stars. You can see them better on the Wastes. I learned that before the war, the city lights would be so bright you couldn't see anything at all up there. Even after the bombs, by the time I came along, the sky was clear enough to see something at night. Dad taught me the names of the constellations from pre-war charts. He taught them to me while sitting 100 feet underground. That sums up all of his high ideals. All his ideas for what we could do to make this crater of a world better.

"Sit, boy" I tell Dogmeat. If we can't relax in the middle of the Brotherhood Citadel, there's not much chance we'll ever get to. But I still don't take off my armor.

I'm not sure how many people I've killed. Taking out the raiders doesn't bother me much once I am reminded of the dead they collect like trophies and scatter around the nests of booze and drugs they call homes. I figure as long as I don't enjoy it too much, somebody up there will forgive me. The feral ghouls have always made me sad. Or at least, they do once I pick through their pockets and find a few caps - or worse, a teddy bear or a single fork. The Supermutants are too hard of a fight for me to worry about anything except surviving until tomorrow. I will admit that when I first saw a Behemoth battling a few of the Brotherhood, I was in awe of the thing. It was a force of nature instead of just something trying to kill me. When it fell, I almost felt sorry.

That was earlier in my travels. Back then, I wanted to see whatever was over the next hill.

The first time I entered Megaton, I failed someone. I didn't draw fast enough to save Lucas Simms. I left his kid alone. Megaton is the best place in the Wastes for that. Moira and Billy Creel and other honestly good folk keep an eye on the kid as best they can. I drop food off there on occasion. But he was the first.

No, hang on. Butch. Mean old Butch's mom was killed. I took the vodka bottles she dropped when she died, and I ran.

I failed the kid in Megaton whose dad got taken by the ants, too. Jesus. They should call me the Orphan-Maker, Miss Too-Late, not the Lone Wanderer.

"Besides, I'm not alone when I'm with you, boy." I say quietly, petting Dogmeat. He wags his tail in satisfaction. It's funny how much that dog loves me, when all I do is take him into danger. But I would have died a hundred times without him. Died in all the ways you can die. Died in the way I fear I am dying now. Perhaps I've been a ghost since Tenpenny Tower. That's when the part of dad that is supposed to still be inside was snuffed out. And now there really is nothing left of him.

I like the Ghouls. The non-feral ones, I mean. The first one I met was Gob, a decent sort. He was so friendly, and so horribly happy to see that I wasn't going to be cruel to him. And I still love Underworld. There's that creepy Crawley there, and his quest that I refused. I'm no assassin. But Violent and Winthrop and even that surly haircutter are all a pleasure to know. And Carol…. Carol reminded me I have some feeling left when she told me about the day the bombs fell. There's not a history book left that could explain it like that. It still makes me feel cold just to remember how she described it. It actually made me feel lucky in some small way. I would rather not remember that world and how it was destroyed. It's better to have it be as real as Tranquility Lane.

I like Ghouls, so I thought Phillips might be okay. Sure he was tough and mean, but who wouldn't be when faced with the Wastes on one hand, and hatred of his used-to-be-fellow man on the other? And Michael and Bessie were downright friendly. It had to be the fault of those bigots in Tenpenny Tower. Sure, Phillips didn't get a free-ride. Nobody does out here. He'd pay for a room, but Ghoul caps should be as good as men's caps.

I killed them. I might as well have killed them with my own hands. Even the nasty bigots who Phillips and his crew carefully laid out to rot in the basement deserved better. They were stupid and scared, but they were right about Phillips. I know they would have been wrong about Gob or Violet. But the one Ghoul I bet on turned out to be the real monster. I bet other people's lives on it, like I was living in some pre-war fantasy.

It's Dashwood I can't even think about now. What a gallant, tough old fellow. I like to imagine there were other people like him in days gone by. People like dad as well. Or even Moira at Megaton with her bizarre optimism. They don't belong in the Wastes today, and neither did I.

I belonged the moment I went after Phillips.

Three Dog reported that Tenpenny Tower had gone silent - that the guards at the doors were gone. One week before, I had walked away feeling stupidly, childishly lighthearted. Gomez had told me not to trust the Ghouls. The snobs still dressed in moldy formal wear said they would leave before they let Ghouls in as neighbors.

I finally couldn't take the dreadful feeling in my stomach. I slipped in through the front gate one morning, and I walked into the basement. One feral Ghoul and a pile of blood told me what I was about to see. I counted the bodies. None of them had left after all.

I ran. That's the part that changed me. I ran away and I tried to help any settlements that asked it of me, and I took Sticky to Big Town, and I did everything I could not to think about the basement.

And then one morning, I woke up in my Megaton bed from a nightmare I couldn't recall.

Dogmeat and I walked back to the tower. The bodies in the basement were gone by then. I vaguely wondered if the ferals had eaten them. And then I walked into the empty lobby, past where Gomez used to sit and trade ammo with me, up into the elevator.

I looked at the floor when I passed Dashwood's apartment.

I found Bessie Lynn first, in what must have become her room. She was just as vacant and strangely cheerful as before. I asked her about the bodies before I could stop myself. She credited Phillips with that task. He always knew best to Bessie.

I walked out, and right into Phillips outside the door.

"Thanks again, kid" he started to say, grinning that grin that manages to look friendly on Gob and the Underworlders' mottled faces, but looks like a demon on his.

The bodies, I told him. Why?

He said I'd join them if I complained again. That could be my excuse - he threatened me. But my flaming sword - my "shish kabob" - was already at my side. I knew what I was doing when I woke up that day. I hit Phillips again, and again, and he got one shot out, but I didn't feel it in my power armor. I backed him into the corner and his body crumpled and burned.

It was over in seconds, and I walked back to the elevator, through the lobby, and out the front gate. Bessie would be worse off alive and without Phillips, confused and frightened. Michael would know exactly what happened. I don't think he would care enough about Phillips to come after me.

I left Dogmeat and took the boat. spent the next month in Point Lookout drunk. I found a friendly seller, and I collected ingredients for moonshine until I could barely carry the resulting jugs in my hands.

And I killed the natives. They are strong, brutish sorts who fight like they were born for it. I tell myself that the ones I shot or burned often had mysterious meat in their packs that I knew to be people. I tell myself they are no different than the raiders who have barely a thought in their ostensibly human heads.

But the raiders at least live in the tunnels and the Wastes. They attack me when I pass by.

I went to the Point Lookout dwellers' homes. I took their ammo and their booze, and I cut them down with my shotgun and my assault rifle. On the worst days, I cut them down with the flaming sword just so I knew I had some fight left. So I had to get close, and get hit. They were stupid, violent, some of them downright cannibalistic. But I made damn sure they would come after me - that the fight would have to be to the end.

It was that damn missionary who brought me back a little. She was so sure that I could help, and that I would do the right thing and not bring back that book.

I don't believe in all that voodoo, but there's something not right about the Dunwich building. And the fellow whose book was missing had an awful lot of fresh heads decorating his property for someone who wasn't a raider.

I let 1000 caps go to waste, just so I could destroy the book, just so a dead Godfreak would be happy.

It was a decision that was so backwards and idealistic and hopeless, my dad would have done the same thing.

I spent two years on my own. For the first few months, I thought about Dad every day. The more I found out about the water, and the place where I was born, the more I wondered if he wasn't a damn liar. Maybe the overseer was right. Maybe I should have let him kill me.

After a while, Dad faded away. Until I woke up from Tranquility Lane, and he was right there.

All of a sudden, I was 10 again, and Dad was all I had or needed in the world. It was as if I had been missing him for my whole life, and as if he had been gone for only a minute.

And when we got to the Jefferson Memorial, I was sure this was it. Dad and I would be heroes together, like we were supposed to be. Father and daughter making the Wasteland just a little better.

He trusted me to protect him and the scientists.

On the walk over to the filter, we were attacked by Supermutants.

For a minute, I thought I had lost him. All he had was a damn pistol. I killed him, I thought. I know I did. I should have made him take some of my gear.

And then he walked down the hill with the Muties's gun on his back, cool as a cucumber, and I knew he had a lot of stories he hadn't told me yet.

There aren't any of his stories left, Dogmeat. The rest are mine.

We leave for Vault 87 in a few hours. I open a bottle of beer. I learned to sleep every few days out on my long trips. There's no need to break that habit now.

But I am so tired. I am so tired of this life.

I have to think of all the people out there drinking irradiated water. I have to think about how I can make a difference now.

But all I can think about is Dad.

I could have protected him.

Why didn't he protect me?

Why did he bother with any of this?

Roy Phillips grins in my head again, saying it's not going to work. It will all end in bodies in the basement. He says you're no better than the rest of the Wasteland. He says this war never ended.


End file.
